Walking Backwards

My mother is gone, the world has returned to its normal order. The baby is, understandably, upset for losing his spotlight. He vacillates between wanting to be held constantly and wanting to destroy everything in his path. Its hard for him to adjust to a life where he isn't constantly being attended to at every waking moment. I had to hold him the entire time I made dinner this evening. Hopefully his interest in my cooking indicates that he will follow in my culinary footsteps rather than his father's, but I have a feeling that his new found concern about all things gastronomic is more of an indicator of his need to be loved than anything else.


I have quite a bit to do to recover from the past week. While I have been picking up frequently for the past two days, it doesn't seem to be improving the state of my house. I had a list of errands to run today that remains unparalleled in my maternal career. Of course, this means I just decided not to do it all. The grocery store probably wasn't the wisest thing to cut out. Just the idea of having the current incarnation of my dear child strapped into a shopping cart for over an hour while I did my weekly shopping alone was enough to steer me toward the other errands first, though. I will have to feed him eventually, so I must go tomorrow unless his food intolerances vanish overnight and he can have a cheese omelet in the morning. I doubt that occurrence.


In a moment of desperation to keep my child from destroying my books, I strapped him into his stroller and wandered around our suburban neighborhood on a fact-finding mission this afternoon (this is after a walk this morning). I am searching out which plants will be appropriate for our garden. One of my mother's friends, who runs her own landscaping company, came over a few days ago and gave me some wonderful ideas with what we can do with my yard. It involves a lot of planting as my lawn is almost totally barren. She told me to look around and find some trees and plants that I like. We are going to be putting in a vegetable garden and a border and adding lots of trees. After this afternoon, I have decided that mountain laurel must be somehow incorporated. Evergreens as well. I'm just worried that we aren't going to be able to afford any major changes. I know some trees can be upwards of a hundred dollars at the nursery. Maybe if we just make changes slowly, it will turn out perfectly.


A sign that we are mere steps away from total insanity. Ben Franklin provides information usable by terrorists.